Among all the peoples of the ancient world, one whose culture most clearly exemplified the spirit of Western society was the Greek or Hellenic. No other people had so strong a devotion to freedom or so firm a belief in the nobility of human achievement. The Greeks glorified humanity as the most important creation in the universe and refused to submit to the dictates of priests or despots. The Greek view of the world was predominantly secular and rationalistic; it exalted the spirit of free inquiry and preferred knowledge to faith. With only a limited cultural inheritance from the past upon which to build the Greeks produced intellectual and artistic monuments that have serve ever since as standards of achievement.
The fall of the Mycenaean civilization resulted in overwhelming change for the Hellenic world. It ushered in a period that is known as the Dark ages which lasted from 1150 to 750 BC (lecture notes ancient Greece pg. 3). Records were lost and the culture reverted to a simpler from. Given the lack of writing or physical remains, the Greek society during the Dark ages is scarce, almost all of it coming from infer
To the Greeks of the Dark Ages religion meant chiefly a polytheistic system. Demeter was the goddess who was mother earth and giver of grain. Then there was Apollo, the sun and giver of light and Poseidon who dwelled in the seas and ruled the waters, and Aphrodited the goddess of love (lecture notes Greek Genius). The Greeks did not expect that their religion would bestow them with goodness or everlasting rewards because the gods were viewed as callous and enraged very easy. However, by the time of Hesiod, a religious reformation had begun that changed the vengeful and capricious gods of Homer into austere arbiters of justice some what like the God that is worshipped in today's society. Given a century after Hesiod cults emerged and a new type of Greek religion was established. There was new believed that there was life after death. It was believed that Death freed the divine soul from the evil body.
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